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Ghostwriting assignment for a business autobiography.

Published:

Published Biographical Ghostwriting Project

The client required a quick biographical overview in their own voices that covered their personal backgrounds and shared business history for use in a larger media project. They wanted something branded and "homegrown" to replace a third party product and it had to fit the same basic design constraints. I had less than a month to complete the manuscript from a standing start and get it off to the graphic designer and fulfillment company.

Here are two sample connecting passages from the book where I imitated the principal's voice.

KARL'S CHAPTER 1 OPENER:

"My business partner, Kip, and I had just finished talking over the events of the day and adding a few last minute thoughts to our keynote speeches for the next morning. We were getting ready to address the biggest crowd that had ever attended one of our business events – a number that has virtually doubled every year since we started working together. A few steps from where we were sitting, coral sand and a turquoise sea stretched out as far as we could see. The only sounds we could hear were the relaxing beat of the waves and the happy clink of the ice cubes in our glasses. I had to laugh, because it was just like a scene from one of those fancy Caribbean travel shows on cable TV. The day could not have been more perfect. I started to ask myself how I got there, but of course, I already knew the answer, and by the time you’re done reading this book, you will, too.

Have you ever taken time out to imagine what your perfect day might be like? When you picture that perfect day, what do you see? Who are you spending it with? What are your surroundings like? Use every one of your five senses to imagine it as vividly as you can. The day I just described to you had already happened in my mind a long time before Kip and I ever set foot on that beach. Each person has his or her own definition of success and your perfect day can be anything you want it to be. Mine is doing what I love to do with the people I love best and having the resources to choose whatever time and place I want."

KIP'S CHAPTER 2 OPENER:

If the world we know and everything in it responds to the same underlying vibrations, can you begin to see why every thought you think is so important? At the subatomic level, the universe really doesn’t make any meaningful distinction between an object in your hand, one that’s light years away, or one that doesn’t even exist yet in the physical world. At the cellular level, your body can’t make any meaningful distinction between a real event and an imaginary one. If that’s true (and the preponderance of scientific evidence says it is), then doesn’t it make more sense to focus your thoughts on the life experiences you WANT rather than on the ones you DON’T want? Great thinkers like Napoleon Hill understood this long before any experimental proof came along, but the visualization exercise Karl gave you in the last chapter takes on a lot more significance when you realize that it’s scientifically grounded in our cells and the fabric of the universe we live in."